Korean Air will launch a Seoul-Colombo-Male flight on March 9.
The service will be thrice weekly – on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday – and will depart Incheon International Airport in Seoul at 2240 and arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka at 0410 the next day. The flight then takes off again at 0540 to touch down in Male, the Maldives at 0640.
The return leg leaves the archipelago at 1530 to arrive in Sri Lanka again at 1730 before departing at 1850 to head back to Seoul for a 0610 touchdown the next day.
The route will be operated by a three-class A330-300, which seats 276 passengers in total: six in first, 18 in prestige, and the rest in economy class.
"For Seoul-Colombo, we expect the traffic to be half business and half leisure" says B I Yeom, general manager of corporate communication at Korean Air. "Many labourers from Sri Lanka come to Korea for work, whereas many Koreans are devout Buddhists and want to visit the sights of religious significance in the South Asian nation. For the Maldives, we anticipate mostly leisure traffic."
This is one of many steps in Korean Air's ambitious 2013 expansion plan. Nine additional aircraft will be added to its fleet this year: two A380s, one A330-200, two B777-300ERs, two B737-900ERs, one B747-8F and one B777F.
With these new aircraft, popular services will be increased and new ones launched. Frequencies to New York, for example, increased from seven to fourteen a week in January, while the Incheon-LA route is now flown 12, rather than seven, times a week. The carrier was also able to restart its Frankfurt route (see here) and will begin an Atlanta route in August (see here).
For more information, visit www.koreanair.com
Alex Andersson
